Ghost cam scripts are a severe problem.

I will explain this for anyone that does not understand what is going on.

Large guild opens multiple newbie accounts.

They place a character at each altar. This character can be a non-trained ghost, non-trained JOAT hiding character, or trained hiding/stealth character. The point is there is one at each altar in Felucca. (17 total)

So take 16 divided by 4. 4 accounts are capable of checking 16 of the 17 altars every 20 minutes. 3 accounts can check 15 altars every 25 minutes. You get the idea.

Obviously, you can see how it is easy to write a script to do this. A minor annoyance is returning exorcised ghosts to the altars. When the ghost is returned he it will be alive and hidden and logged out. This means everytime it logs in, it must be first discovered, then revealed and killed. There is a 5 minute window every 20-25 minutes to do this (basically, once a spawn). That's the first pass. Then, on the second pass, you get a chance to exorcise.

Okay, clearly this is undue burden on spawners. Clearly exorcism DOES NOT WORK.

Now, the script reports to any large guild's UOAM server as chat messages, or to a website that is set up. Yes, scripts can do this easily. The status of any spawn can be reported every 20-25 minutes (or quicker, just open more accounts).

So, if you have been following the post. You have now realized that this currently a HUGE problem. Now, realize that this has been a HUGE problem for YEARS. Year after year next to nothing (exorcism) has been done about this by the Developers. Next to nothing. (again only exorcism, which I have shown does not work)

So, once a large guild is notified by UOAM or website that there is an active spawn, they will usually send in an active player on a stealther to scout, or just raid the spawn with massive numbers.

The Developers need to do something about this. This thread is not about proposing fixes. This thread is about getting a Developer to respond by acknowledging the problem, then asking us for feedback or simply developing a fix based on the feedback present in the numerous other threads on the issue that have been posted over the years.

I would like to re-iterate that this is a game design issue. Forget about the programs used to achieve this. The solution is to render them useless. I could theoretically design a robot that pushes the keys on the keyboard and moves and clicks the mouse as needed to run a "ghost cam"

The game needs a change of design to make the process either impossible or prohibitive to the point of being counterproductive.

So you want devs to acknowledge a bug without them fixing it? They never do that until a (exploitable) bug is fixed. You must only want some acknowledgment that you are missing in real life.

The only way to fix it is to check IPs.. and that would affect people playing on the same connection (which doesn't bother me). Send this into feedback instead of posting on the forum.. you really expect them to skim every thread over the past few years to find the few that talk about it?

Stratics Veteran

All Felucca Champ spawns, and thus all high-end items of the game (Stat-Powerscrolls, 120 Powerscrolls, and now the Replicas) are in control of 2 or 3 guilds, who mostly use cheats and break rules to achieve their goals.

I really wonder why the Developers are not doing anything against this. An honest player NEVER will have the chance to acquire such items, unless he buys them for millions of gold from Luna vendors. That's one main reason the economy of UO is ruined.

Do you expect me to create a character, spend a lot of time I do not have and effort, to compensate flaws in the system and do the jobs of non-existant GMs?

Besides, there are more borderline illegal tricks than just ghost cams.

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This post makes no sense based on the context of the post. The solution was given a post or two above yours.. you had to have your say tho, repeating the same arguments from before. Yet you won't admit that the only answer is what I said.. to only allow one IP at a time. I am nearly positive this was suggested before as it is not very original.

Whatever borderline tricks you know of, do not belong in a ghost cam thread. Unless you mean IP spoofing (which nearly nothing can be done about) or rich people with mutiple ISPs (likewise).

Here is a quick fix.If you log out in a area like that when you log on you are teleported to fel britian. They could even put in the code that you cant return to a champ spawn area for 30 in game mins. Kinda like it was when spawns first came out -if you died you went to brit and couldnt return to fel dungeons for 20 mins.

Stratics Veteran

This post makes no sense based on the context of the post. The solution was given a post or two above yours.. you had to have your say tho, repeating the same arguments from before. Yet you won't admit that the only answer is what I said.. to only allow one IP at a time. I am nearly positive this was suggested before as it is not very original.

Whatever borderline tricks you know of, do not belong in a ghost cam thread. Unless you mean IP spoofing (which nearly nothing can be done about) or rich people with mutiple ISPs (likewise).

Quit boosting your post count.

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I'll continue to "boost my post count" now, as you so eloquently put it. But obviously I am talking to an illiterate who does not get the root of this problem, and decides to get offensive instead.

As the oringial poster said:

"The Developers need to do something about this. This thread is not about proposing fixes. This thread is about getting a Developer to respond by acknowledging the problem, then asking us for feedback or simply developing a fix based on the feedback present in the numerous other threads on the issue that have been posted over the years."

The problem are not the ghost cams per se. I would not even call it a cheat to use a ghost in order to monitor Champ Spawns. And let's face it, you won't be able to tell whether there's a person or a script using the Ghost's PC. The suggestion of allowing one IP ad a time only proves your lack of networking knowledge. A lot of people (family members) are playing via the same connection. But I assume you'd just lock them out.

The problem is that cheating in general is out of control. As I said, many other cheats are out there, ruining everybody's gaming experience. But I assume you already know about them more than you'd admit. It took EA years to ban a few dupers. They still haven't done a single thing against speed hackers and scripters. Those who abuse the system know that they can do that without the slightest risk of being penalized. And therein lies the root of our problems.

Stratics Veteran

Don't worry. The good news is, the dev team isn't just "kind of aware" of the problem. It's not like all the other threads that have addressed this issue only made them "sort of aware" of the problem.

The bad news is, game devs use QA for feedback on fixes of a sensitive nature, and it's not like this thread is going to make them any more aware of the problem than they already were. (Want in on the juicy stuff? Ask for a job.)

The worse news is, devs do not have time to answer threads just so that you or your problem can receive acknowledgment, particularly when you and your problem are no mystery to anyone who has spent a little time on the forum.

The even worse news is, devs at EA have even less time for this kind of forum debate than devs who work for other publishers. I hope this answers your question. You really, really shouldn't be holding out for a dev to show up.

This post makes no sense based on the context of the post. The solution was given a post or two above yours.. you had to have your say tho, repeating the same arguments from before. Yet you won't admit that the only answer is what I said.. to only allow one IP at a time. I am nearly positive this was suggested before as it is not very original.

Whatever borderline tricks you know of, do not belong in a ghost cam thread. Unless you mean IP spoofing (which nearly nothing can be done about) or rich people with mutiple ISPs (likewise).

ghost cam scripts are not used by every guild and aren't used as often as your think your just paranoid because you keep getting raided,!!!!! just because you get raided 99% of the time doesn't mean there are ghost cams.

my guild scouts the spawns manualy we just take some spawns each and go scout them. if we see players there we raid, ITS THAT SIMPLE, its the way of feluca, thats why they have spawns in illish and tokuno for you guys that cant hack the pace in fel.

with the recent publish things have gotten alot more busy in fel so things are great for the pvper at the moment its the law of averages you see the more tramies doing spawns the more raiding that will be done because we PKers know you are there,

All Felucca Champ spawns, and thus all high-end items of the game (Stat-Powerscrolls, 120 Powerscrolls, and now the Replicas) are in control of 2 or 3 guilds, who mostly use cheats and break rules to achieve their goals.

I really wonder why the Developers are not doing anything against this. An honest player NEVER will have the chance to acquire such items, unless he buys them for millions of gold from Luna vendors. That's one main reason the economy of UO is ruined.

This has been going on for years, and nothing was done.
WHY?

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join a pvp guild, are you saying that pkers arent honest some of the most honest people in the game belong to pvp guilds

Ghost Cams are a problem HOWEVER limiting to one player on per IP addy is not the Solution. UO prides itself as a family oriented game. Many players play with their wives, husbands, sons, daughters, grandkids etc. Using a home network. When you log in to play UO only sees the DSL/Cable router IP you are using. I would suggest that perhaps putting a timer on how long you can remain a ghost before rezzing. If a 10 minute time limit or so was used that would allow spawners to get rezzed by other players at the spawn, usually. If you go past the 10 minute limit then the ghost is removed to a town to find a healer. My wife informs me that when you use to die at a champspawn you would be ported immediately and not allow back for 20 mins.

I know players who do not play with family would think the IP solution is best but is the worse one. It would remove one of the important aspects of UO. I know my guild is very much a family guild with husbands/wives/sons/daughters and grandkids a part of it and doing hunts etc together.

ghost cam scripts are not used by every guild and aren't used as often as your think your just paranoid because you keep getting raided,!!!!! just because you get raided 99% of the time doesn't mean there are ghost cams.

my guild scouts the spawns manualy we just take some spawns each and go scout them. if we see players there we raid, ITS THAT SIMPLE, its the way of feluca, thats why they have spawns in illish and tokuno for you guys that cant hack the pace in fel.

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clearly you are doing nothing wrong and your gameplay would not be affected by a fix for ghost cam scripts. i'm not sure what your point is here? please clarify.

Every time some one puts their time in (hours-week-months) to undo their wouk you also must put in the same amount of work(hour-weeks-months) and so far as ghost cams are concerned the time is highly in favor of the cammers. Just think of the hours spent in setting this up and restting this up over and over again by these as you call them guilds. If you similarly spent your time to kill and excorcize these cam as they do(hours-weeks-months) it would be a battle of patients. The battle you LOSE every time you spend 30 mins to work a spawn that they worked all week to maintain the cam on.

And lets throw this out there. When you say script you mean something that some one does without any work involved. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. It takes a guild leader a lot of work to continuously keep them in place and running properly. There are many things the devs have done throught uo's time to make them rewiter the script as well as makeing sure some one has to keep an eye on it.

Now, I wont say that in the past there hasnt been months even of flawless scripting. There was and maybe will be in the future BUT, add in a few nuisances yourself and the whole thing folds! If YOU(by you i mean 1 out of every 25 spawners) checks the alters without the intention of doing a spawn 1 time a day. You will add frustation and work on the cam runners as well and make that actual person that sets them up WORK. This will break them down over time and make it NOT WORTH THE EFFORT!

Its up to players in the games to BE THE MECHANIC for the fix. After all it IS the INTERNET and not the recess lawn behind your school!

Well the idea of having trial accounts only able to use limited aspects of Uo could be a fix. But it would not answer an account paid for solely for the purpose of being ghost cams. After all the wealth that comes from controlling power scrolls can easily pay for monthly fees associated with paying for a few accounts.

It would be simpler to have a NO-log code written for each champ area. A character loses connection or logs out in a champ area, when they log back in they find themselves at the nearest moongate.

It seems like a reasonable cure to this problem. Yes someone who loses connection might be upset about not being where they were and have to travel to get back where they were--but lets look at the bigger picture here and what is good for the game.

Stratics Veteran

What about adding tools to help the community fight back? Eg: put a gong at some of the spawns that can send a broadcast across Fel (and perhaps Malas). If you're being raided, you at least have the option to hit the gong to let everyone on the shard know there's a battle going down

Stratics Veteran

This has been beat up for AGES by ther real PvPers and Spawners. It seems now that tramies have a desire to get items from champ spawns they start whinning.

Anyhow simple solutions have been mentioned may time.

Once dead liek a while back you were removed from Fel dungeons, This needs to be reinstated since with the age of insurance nothing major is lost, and will once again meaning death has a consequence to your team not a 2 second loss.

Ghosts cannot enter the spawn area radius, they are booted to the perimiter of the spawn anrea and cannot reneter without being ressed.

Ghost always visible in spawn areas, and exorcisable at any stage from the entire spawn area not just near the alter.

Trials accounts cannot acces Fel !!!!

the list goes on and on.

Sweeny blocking IPs is by far one of the worst ideas ever, since ALOT of people and families play off the same IP.

I propose a solution to this problem. Make it so you cannot time out in a fel dungeon or T2A. Make the PK guilds physically scout these spawns. The developers are trying to bring back pvp by bringing forth the changes to spawns in this publish, but the same problem is around that killed fel to begin with. Please put a stop to unattended cams monopolizing fel champ spawns.

I is such and easy fix, and we know they can do someting like this cause they did it with pub 16.

Well the idea of having trial accounts only able to use limited aspects of Uo could be a fix. But it would not answer an account paid for solely for the purpose of being ghost cams. After all the wealth that comes from controlling power scrolls can easily pay for monthly fees associated with paying for a few accounts.

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trial accounts cost 9.99

1 month of UO costs 12.99

i don't see how it would be much a deterrent.

It seems like a reasonable cure to this problem. Yes someone who loses connection might be upset about not being where they were and have to travel to get back where they were--but lets look at the bigger picture here and what is good for the game.

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any character, living or dead, that logs out and stays logged out for 5 minutes should get teleported out of the dungeon/t2a to a random town in Felucca. to circumvent this they'd have to run a script that logs in each character at least every ~4-5 minutes. if it's really still a problem, the developers can revisit the issue.

Honestly, I wonder if the scripting problem (not just ghost cams, but all of the useful advantages) have completely destroyed any "fair" chance for PvM centric players to participate in PvP centric areas. I have always been a fan of keeping nonconsentual PvP alive and well, but in this enviroment, I just don't think it works.

I'd like to see Felucca kept as is, but I think it is past time that Ilsh and Tok spawns dropped power scrolls as well.

The population of Felucca will never have the drive to change behaviors until there are no nonconsentual "easy" targets.

Stratics Veteran

Stratics Veteran

All Felucca Champ spawns, and thus all high-end items of the game (Stat-Powerscrolls, 120 Powerscrolls, and now the Replicas) are in control of 2 or 3 guilds, who mostly use cheats and break rules to achieve their goals.

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You do know that every spawn in Felucca is available in Ilshenar? Felucca does not have a monopoly on these new items.

Let me be clear. I read every post in this thread. Some people posted saying it is difficult to operate a successful Cam Script.

This is untrue. While it may seem that way to some of you, it is not hard to write scripts. It is 5th grade math.

As you may expect, a large guild can easily maintain the accounts needed, trial or not. I'm sure many of you have 4+ accounts. How hard can it be for a guild of 20+ people to generate the cash to do this?

This is not magic. This is not wizardry. This is not a creative person figuring out an ingenious new template or combo. No in-game or IRL skill is involved so why should there be an in-game skill to combat it? This is cheating. It needs to be coded out.

Face it, Mr.Tact's experiment with Exorcism has failed (not to mention he's long gone). It's not legitimate gameplay. It's time for a change.

- There's only one problem with your wish: We've already been requesting a change for several years.

Just revert to the original code and boot people from champ spawn areas when they die.

I actually lost interest in being a soloer at spawns shortly after this change because it just allows zergs to keep coming at ya' without delay.
I really felt that it shifted the power to groups with numbers and took power away from those that could stay alive to finish off the champ.
And I don't think that was a wise move; unless abandoning the need for any strategy other than 'biggest group tends to get most kills and powerscrolls'. People used to think twice about killing others when it meant they would be booted if they died. Basically, I think the allowance of ghosts in the spawn area was a major 'dumbing down' of champ spawn strategies & skill.
It also made the whole affair more anti-social. Originally strangers would cooperate and help each other out at the spawns. After the change it became a matter of being in a group already and usually trying to kill anyone that wasn't already on your side.

All Im saying is if your not making it harder your making it easier. And thast something you can do about it. Make them work for it find cam recall locations! block them. T2A is a prime place to start! Very few ways in from a fel shrine!

Trial accounts are not the problem.. at 9.99 apiece, real accounts can be paid for for 9.99 a month as well (for 6 months). A real account can avoid the newbie in fel dilemma. Forcing ghosts to leave spawns would hurt people who honestly died at a spawn.. they'd have a hard time reaching their corpses.

The devs have already said they have no problem with ghost spies.. hence sadly the only real solution is an IP check. This would affect a lot of people, which is why nothing is ever going to be done about it.

Forcing ghosts to leave spawns would hurt people who honestly died at a spawn.. they'd have a hard time reaching their corpses.

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- It never hurt me when I would get kicked from the area if I died; it was a part of the Risk v Reward. If it isn't blessed than it can be insured; otherwise, you can use a Bag of Sending /or lose your gains as a result...
Felucca: Risk v Reward, right?

The devs have already said they have no problem with ghost spies.. hence sadly the only real solution is an IP check. This would affect a lot of people, which is why nothing is ever going to be done about it.

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- The current Devs. have not said as much. Years ago, sure, it had been said; but I firmly believe that was because they wanted exorcism to allow us, the players, to take care of the problem on our own; and they, as well as I, hoped it would have been developed into a valid solution. Unfortunately that fix simply faltered and inevitably failed, in regards to champ spawn ghost cams. Furthermore IP's are easily spoofed, by those willing to cheat, and that is why an IP check has not solved much of any of UO's cheating dilemmas.

2. While yes, it does prevent some people from multiclienting, it will stop a ton more from being able to play at the same time as those in the same house.

3. No. It's bad. You're wrong. Stop giving the devs bad ideas, they come up with enough of them on their own.

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QFT. To be honest I never had a problem with spy cams...then again I also spawn for fights and not profit so I guess I'm a bad one to ask... To me Speedhacking and Pot/Heal scripts are the real problem.

I would agree with the teleporting ghosts out of champ spawn areas and into papua or delucia.

This seems the most well rounded solution.

People who champ and die to spawn,if they have any cursed scrolls your in fel your party can loot you. people who raid and die must then face a long walk for res giving time to set up defences, and making for more tactical fights.

people who intend to champ must be more cautious of raids and set up defences, which i believe more guilds would do if you didnt just face and endless zurg squad as all players jus insta res and head back in.

If it was original coding (i wasnt in fel when they were introduced) then it should even be that hard to change either.

Wouldnt stop the stealth cams but hey they can easily be fixed with tracking (even joat will occasionaly catch them), conflags, detect hidden eq etc and kill the cam. which then gets teleported.

Stratics Veteran

Basically, I think the allowance of ghosts in the spawn area was a major 'dumbing down' of champ spawn strategies & skill.
It also made the whole affair more anti-social. Originally strangers would cooperate and help each other out at the spawns. After the change it became a matter of being in a group already and usually trying to kill anyone that wasn't already on your side.

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Maybe it's the time I spent in Eve, but high-end content should not take any of the M's out of the MMORPG. You can rest assured that Mythic knows this about the genre.

If you have gotten this far in UO, then you should have figured out by now that anti-social behavior is not rewarded at this stage of the game. If anti-social behavior becomes rewarding, then the game has an issue that needs fixing. (Tip: competitive and anti-social do not mean the same thing.)

But you should not think of these problems only in terms of cheating and exploiting, particularly in an area where acceptable lines of behavior are blurred. You can easily forget the real issue that way. And it seems most of you have.

At the most fundamental level, game designers should be concerned about the play experience. Is it fun? Are all of you having fun out there, or do these issues add up to a fun-stopper? When you're at these champ spawns, do you see a lot of people not having fun? Or does this thread simply represent a vocal minority? I don't know, so you tell me (and any other baffled/curious onlookers here).

Keep in mind that no dev is going to come into this thread to tell you what a great idea you have, and why didn't they think of that. No one here is offering suggestions that wouldn't have been thrown around in a developer meeting already, long before this thread was made. Rehashing technical details, as if you have anything new to say, is not going to keep devs coming back to this thread.

The biggest issue is whether or not you're able to have fun. That's the only kind of issue Mythic can't figure out simply by having a developer meeting.

As a new player, none of this affects me. However, this does not sound cool:

Maybe it's the time I spent in Eve, but high-end content should not take any of the M's out of the MMORPG. You can rest assured that Mythic knows this about the genre.

If you have gotten this far in UO, then you should have figured out by now that anti-social behavior is not rewarded at this stage of the game. If anti-social behavior becomes rewarding, then the game has an issue that needs fixing. (Tip: competitive and anti-social do not mean the same thing.)

But you should not think of these problems only in terms of cheating and exploiting, particularly in an area where acceptable lines of behavior are blurred. You can easily forget the real issue that way. And it seems most of you have.

At the most fundamental level, game designers should be concerned about the play experience. Is it fun? Are all of you having fun out there, or do these issues add up to a fun-stopper? When you're at these champ spawns, do you see a lot of people not having fun? Or does this thread simply represent a vocal minority? I don't know, so you tell me (and any other baffled/curious onlookers here).

Keep in mind that no dev is going to come into this thread to tell you what a great idea you have, and why didn't they think of that. No one here is offering suggestions that wouldn't have been thrown around in a developer meeting already, long before this thread was made. Rehashing technical details, as if you have anything new to say, is not going to keep devs coming back to this thread.

The biggest issue is whether or not you're able to have fun. That's the only kind of issue Mythic can't figure out simply by having a developer meeting.

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Good point,

Most of the time doing spawns and general gameplay is fun and i enjoy it alot, if i didnt i wouldnt be paying. In general i dont even mind being raided even if it is a zurg that kind of adds to the fun and from my experience i dont believe we have been the subject to many a raid by cam, i honestly believe most of the time its an actualy player(most of the time we try and kill them lol)

There are some thing which annoy me but i wouldnt say it has an impact on my enjoyment i suppose you would just say its an annoyance. Speeders and other hacks i do believe ruin alot of peoples fun. Cams i wouldnt say too much.

Trial accounts are not the problem.. at 9.99 apiece, real accounts can be paid for for 9.99 a month as well (for 6 months). A real account can avoid the newbie in fel dilemma. Forcing ghosts to leave spawns would hurt people who honestly died at a spawn.. they'd have a hard time reaching their corpses.

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your argument is flawed: after 5 minutes, their corpse will be gone anyway.

The devs have already said they have no problem with ghost spies..

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but I do. and a lot of other players do too. this holds significant weight. ghost spies (scripted or not) circumvent the fog of war. they need to be eliminated. Mr.Tact's 3 year old exorcism solution is not working. we need a change here.

this issue is not going to go away. this thread is not going to go away. i assume the Developers are working today and tomorrow and next monday-wed and friday. it would be nice if they would give some indication that they are looking into this instead of being Mute until Jan 5.

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